Mark

Recent issues of the '50 have the rear glass for that top, but the top itself was only in the first issue.

Aurora did one in 1/32 scale, a demo derby car. "Demolition Demon" '56 Ford two-door sedan.

I don't know why anyone would use a debit card. You just don't get all of the protection you would get with a credit card. That said, I ran into another scam of sorts at Lowe's earlier today. Went in to pick up a 40 volt battery leaf blower. I wanted that one because it uses the same battery as the lawnmower and weed whacker I already have. Lowe's (Kobalt, their in-store brand) doesn't seal their cartons with those round pieces of clear tape like everyone else seems to do. Like most if not all of their battery garden tools, the leaf blower comes with a battery charger and one battery. Some dirt bag buying one of the 40 volt garden tools apparently cracked open another item to help themselves to a second battery, slipping it into the item they bought. And I actually went back and forth, should I check this thing before I leave the store? Lesson learned after a quick trip back to the store.

Love them straight sixes. I bought an AMC in 1979, put over 200,000 trouble-free miles on it, had to let it go when the car's body rusted to the point of being unsafe. Easy to work on: water pump took a couple of hours even with taking the radiator out, fuel pump in about fifteen minutes. The straight six nearly always has more torque than a V6 of equal displacement, can pull a higher gear which will get you better gas mileage on the open road.

I'd imagine someone will be casting the stock grille/bumper not long after the Atlantis kit hits the shelves. Shame they don't tool the thing, but they probably wouldn't sell enough additional kits to justify the cost.

The Round 2 issues of the '50 Ford convertible include a straight axle setup that will fit the '49 frame, and eliminate the need for an axle hole in the engine block.

The Mercury kit had those parts added in the Nineties.

All of the '50 convertible kits have those parts: finned cylinder heads and dual carb intake. The '49 and '50 kits were developed in tandem and released at the same time in 1962. They share no actual tooling but many parts are similar. The engine blocks fall into that category. Ertl later altered the '49 coupe engine to eliminate the axle hole in the block, so that is preferable to the '50 which still has the axle hole.

Kurtis was in the right place at the right time. Right after the end of the war, right in the hotbed of aircraft construction on the West Coast. All of that now-surplus aluminum sheet, round tubing, Dzus fasteners, and other stuff selling for pennies on the dollar, and he himself having a brilliant design in the back of his head. Some of those midgets were racing competitively into the early Seventies. Only then were the VW powered cars taking over, and that engine demanded a different frame design.

I'm surprised this setup didn't get used more often on the street. My thinking would be that a clutch would be preferable over a high-stall torque converter, and if you've got a "built" engine, it probably isn't producing sufficient vacuum to shift an automatic transmission anyway. The clutch would get rid of the negative aspects of the high-stall converter, and the manually shifted automatic would lessen driveline shock and eliminate declutching for shifts.

One of the Rod & Custom magazines (the short-lived R&C Models, or the regular magazine that had model articles until 1967) outlined the bigger Monogram midget kit being used as the basis for a 1/25 scale sprint car. Even so, the body was cut down in several areas.

The Revell (ex-Monogram) '66 Malibu has a clutch/automatic setup (as well as a four-speed). The automatic transmission in that kit isn't too good, but it's the only kit I know of that ever had that setup.

They keep saying "under $55,000", but I'm betting no dealer will actually have one available at that price.

I guess it varies by state and even county, but you get summoned to come in? I'm used to getting a letter with a phone number, and calling it every evening Sunday through Thursday. The letter would be numbered, with a range of about 200-250 people told to report the following day. Most times the same number of people were summoned, so you could tell with some accuracy whether your number would come up. If you made it five days without being summoned, they released you on the fifth day. The time before last, I got two notices for the same week (one for a grand jury). The grand jury one came after the other one. At first they wanted me to check up on both of them, but later relented and dismissed me from the grand jury one. I was released from the other one when my number was outside the first five days' number of people they summoned. I have been required to go in twice, once sitting for a trial for a week.

Doesn't the Pro Modeler one have NASCAR version parts, while the others are stock only? Or do they all include those parts?

I don't mess with the off-brand or store brand (Hobby Lobby, etc) knives because, in general, the blades don't interchange exactly with X-Acto or other better known brands. They're often too tight to fit, or a sloppy fit. And when the store switches suppliers next year, the blades they carry won't fit either. Best to stick with one brand. I've got X-Acto knives that came in boxes of parts or started kits, others I snagged off of tarps at automotive swap meets ("everything on the tarp for a quarter, leave money in the coffee can in the corner". Often the blade would be busted off or bent, with the separate parts frozen. Overnight soaking the end in penetrating oil, unscrew everything, toss the junk blade, clean the corrosion off of the threads, reassemble. I've got enough of them that I don't need to change to a different style blade, there's a handle for each one.

The one-part is good in certain instances, like smoothing ejector pin marks. I've got Tamiya white putty and white 3M automotive spot putty, both work for that. For anything where you would need to build up multiple applications of the one-part putty, just use the two-part instead. Why wait around for multiple layers to dry?

Ford didn't sell those in big numbers with the big engine, as it was the "Thunderbird" 429 which took forever to catch on with the street machine/drag racing crowd. The four-barrel 351 Cleveland was available, Ford would have been smarter to promote a 351 Falcon as a Roadrunner/GTO Judge kind of muscle car.

In most states the truck won't pass inspection with the tires sticking out like that. So the owner has to keep a set of compliant wheels and tires around to switch onto the truck for the inspection. Or buy a sticker, but with newer vehicles you still have to take it in and hook it up to the diagnostic equipment to ensure it still has emissions gear in place and functional. Then back home for a wheel/tire change so you can get back to slinging slop down the sides of the truck. As for people crying poor, you often run into them at swap meets or train/toy shows. Got their cap and jacket from the casino (how much did he lose to get those?), got season tickets for one of the local sports teams. But to spend an extra few bucks for something at a swap meet, it's like you are asking them to sacrifice their first born.

Stores carrying that paint don't order one color to refill the rack. They wait until they need several colors. And that only happens when someone at the store actually looks at the paint rack and figures out that some is needed, or when it is brought to their attention. Sometimes they'll move a duplicate bottle of a color still in stock to the empty space to make it appear as though they're fully stocked.

Too, at an ISCA car show in the late Seventies, someone had a completely chrome plated small-block Windsor Ford engine on a stand. Chrome block, heads, exhaust manifolds, sheet metal "Powered by Ford" valve covers, stock air cleaner, the whole nine yards. It was supposedly going to be put in a custom Ford van.

The plated block had parts of it cut out prior to plating, it couldn't run. They may have put a running engine in for racing. Or, like a number of other cars, it was raced first, found to be uncompetitive, then rebuilt into a show car. The Orange Crate Deuce sedan falls into this category. The Benicki Brothers (sp?) Chrome Coffin competition roadster also had a chromed engine block and heads. Again, not sure it was raced with the chromed block. And again, once determined it wasn't competitive, sold to Carl Casper who changed the intake setup and body making it into the Undertaker dragster.

The Warlock kit has been turning up, I believe the '78 long bed is now OOP with the Warlock replacing it in the catalog.

Nope. Only the MPC annual kits ('71-'77 plus '78 "Chevy Hatchback" Monza "S") had it.

The parts trees with the wheels, and the chassis accessories (axles, brakes, radius rods) are the same in all of the Keeler's Kustoms kits. That's not a bad thing; again they are the ex-Parts Pack items. Slicks and tires are the same too (similar to the Revell Pirelli front tires, dragster front tires, and M&H slicks) only the Atlantis ones have no brand name detail. Frame is the roadster parts pack frame with flat side rails (as opposed to the round tubular unit in the Fiat coupe kit). As with all of these kits, if you know what you are getting, then you know you are getting a pile of parts in each kit. But, some massaging is needed to get everything to work as a unit. The parts packs sort of work with one another, some minor rework was done to combine them into car kits, but they still don't fall together out of the box. On the flip side, if you know what you are looking at and can ID parts not shown in the instructions, you have many more building options.